On 2/9/2012 8:36 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:14:20 -0800, Donn Messenheimer
wrote:

On 2/8/2012 8:07 PM, rangerssuck wrote:

Fer crissakes, you can walk around pretty much any suburban
neighborhood on garbage day and pick up perfectly serviceable TVs,
microwaves and computers for free. If you want to believe that there
are no poor people in America, fine. Go right ahead. But seriously,
John, you may want to take a walk through a homeless shelter some day.
Yeah, they're all livin' the high life there.

How about the families that are splitting a can of soup five ways and
calling it dinner? How about the people who are making a choice
between feeding their kids or buyng their medications? How about the
kids wearing hand me down clothes that are three sizes too large
because it was a choice between paying the rent or buying a pair of
pants at the salvation army?

This is a caricature. It doesn't even have the status of true
anecdotes, let alone an accurate description of a big problem.


I have met some of these people, right here in "affluent" Northern New
Jersey.

I'm sorry, I don't believe you. I don't believe you have met anyone who
has split a can of soup five ways and called it dinner. I don't believe
you have met people who have had to choose between food for their
children and medication.


And no, I'm not going to post their names, addresses and
pictures for your edification. I will, however, suggest that you spend
a little time outside your own comfort zone, and see what's going on
around you. Get some perspective.

Why don't you start from the perspective of telling the truth, rather
than taking extravagantly extremist and *untrue* political rhetoric and
treating it as evidence?

You're talking past each other with different definitions of "poor."
Late last year the Heritage Foundation (conservative) determined that
4% of those below the "poverty line" had no regular place to live and
had insufficient food. It looks like a good study. That's a big
number, actually, and right here in central NJ you can find plenty of
people who fit ranger's description. The church-run soup kitchen in
New Brunswick has plenty of them. My neighbor dishes out soup there
once or twice each week.


That study
(http://www.heritage.org/research/rep...-americas-poor)
said no such thing. What they said was:

Over the course of a year, 4 percent of poor persons become
*temporarily* homeless. [emphasis added]

Even if it did, it's a pretty small number, actually. The percentage of
people living below the poverty line is about 15.1%. If four percent of
those are living in the conditions you stated, then that's 0.6% of the
population,

You and the other bleeding heart leftist want to pretend that this tiny
percentage (4% of 15.1%, or 0.6% total) are living in chronic
homelessness. That simply is not true.

There are two main points in that Heritage Foundation study, both of
which I have been making he

1. Most poor people live materially better than the majority of people
lived even 40 years ago (early 1970s), let alone a century ago.

2. The number of people living in destitution, i.e. extreme poverty,
is quite small.

The import of that is that Romney was right, even if he said it poorly:
there is no reason to worry much about the poor, as there is a safety
net that keeps all but a small number of the poor from falling into
destitution, and the repairs needed are relatively minor.